LIVE VERDICT WATCH | Teacher shot by 6-year-old sues Newport News schools for $40 mil

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Nearly three years after the Richneck Elementary School shooting, the jury has reached a verdict in the $40 million lawsuit Abby Zwerner filed against Newport News Public Schools.

Zwerner was shot in the hand and chest in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her first-grade classroom. Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries, and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet narrowly missed her heart and remains in her chest.

The shooting sent shock waves through the military shipbuilding community and the country, with many wondering how a child so young could access a gun and shoot his teacher.

Former assistant principal Ebony Parker, who’s listed as a defendant in that lawsuit, also faces separate criminal charges. A special grand jury earlier this year indicted her on eight counts of felony child abuse and neglect, one for each bullet in the 6-year-old’s loaded gun. Parker’s jury trial on those charges is set to begin Nov. 17, 2025.

The child’s mother, Deja Taylor, is also serving prison time after pleading guilty to federal and state charges connected to the shooting. 

She’s currently serving a two-year state sentence for felony child neglect, followed by a 21-month federal sentence for using marijuana while owning a firearm. Investigators said her son used that gun to shoot Zwerner in January 2023.

A jury has awarded $10 million to Newport News teacher Abby Zwerner, who was shot by her 6-year-old student inside her Richneck Elementary classroom in 2023.

Zwerner had asked for a $40 million judgment in her civil trial.

13News Now will have more on this developing story.

Zwerner’s attorney, Kevin Biniazan, made an impassioned plea for jurors to find Ebony Parker liable for gross negligence on Wednesday. For upwards of an hour, Biniazan recounted Parker’s actions, or lack thereof, on January 6th, 2023, when a 6-year-old boy brought a gun to school and shot his teacher, Abby Zwerner.

“A gun changes everything,” said Biniazan. “Or at least it should have, but that’s not what happened.”

Zwerner’s legal team detailed the multiple warnings given by four teachers about the boy’s behavior that day. Biniazan called Parker’s reactions “indifferent” as the former assistant principal never left her office to investigate or call for help.

Biniazan detailed the Richneck Elementary School handbook. In it, it lists the threat of a firearm as a “tier 3” threat and mandates that teachers immediately inform an administrator about the threat. That administrator is then obligated to treat every threat as “credible” until an analysis is completed.  

Zwerner’s team said instead of investigating, Parker “put her head in the sand.”

“You cannot stick your head in the sand and then come into court and say, ‘I didn’t have the information,’ when it was your job to find it,” said Biniazan. “Ignorance is not a defense because you closed your eyes and ears.”

Parker’s attorneys pushed back and said Parker used real-time judgment to react to an unforeseeable and unprecedented shooting.

The former assistant principal’s legal team said the same Richneck handbook stated, “discipline is the initial responsibility of teachers.” They pointed to the fact that Zwerner always had the power to evacuate her classroom, separate the student or call the child’s mother, none of which Zwerner did. 

Parker’s attorneys also questioned the actions of the other teachers who testified on Zwerner’s behalf. They argued that school security is a “collaborative effort,” and that none of the teachers recommended an evacuation or call for help. 

While this lack of action might have been “inadequate,” Parker’s attorneys said they are not indifferent on Parker’s part. 

“What happened at Richneck Elementary School was a tragedy, but please do not compound that tragedy by blaming Dr. Parker for it,” said Sandra Douglas, Parker’s attorney. 

Douglas also cast doubt about the extent and range of Zwerner’s injuries, both physical and emotional. She questioned how much of a “recluse” Zwerner had become after the plaintiff went to concerts in the months following the shooting. 

Parker’s attorney called it necessary brutal honesty.

“I’m not minimizing what happened to Ms. Zwerner, I’m not doing that,” said Douglas. “But when someone is asking for $40 million, it’s my job to tell you, there is another side to that story.”

On rebuttal, Biniazan had choice words for this line of questioning. Biniazan said he wanted to “jump up and scream,” but refrained. 

Biniazan said the only reason Parker’s attorneys are placing blame on Zwerner and the other teachers is to deflect blame from their client.

“What they are saying is ‘Dr. Parker dropped the ball,’ and they want somebody else to pick it up for her and do it,” said Biniazan. “There was only one person who had all the pieces to the puzzle, who could have taken action, and it’s always been Dr. Parker.”

Jurors then left to deliberate at 3:22 p.m. By 5:30, they told the judge they could not come to a decision yet.

They will return on Thursday to continue deliberations. 

The civil trial resumed on Monday after taking Friday and the weekend off. Lawyers for Abby Zwerner rested their case Thursday after Zwerner’s testimony.

Lawyers representing former Assistant Principal Ebony Parker presented their side of the story, and introduced two expert witnesses: a forensic psychologist and an expert in school safety.

Parker did not take the stand. Altogether, defense testimony lasted only a day.

Most notable was Dr. Amy Klinger, the expert in school safety. Klinger told jurors that Parker acted as reasonably as she could with the information that was put in front of her. Klinger testified that teachers — Zwerner and two others — did not protect themselves as much as they could have, for example, by calling 911. 

She stated school security is a “collaborative” process, and if the teachers truly felt as threatened as they did, they could have taken action themselves. While Klinger acknowledged that the teachers warned Parker on several occasions about the “threat,” Klinger said Parker had “plausible doubt” that a 6-year-old would ever bring a firearm to school. 

Klinger reframed Parker’s actions as “cautious” rather than negligent. She argued it was not unreasonable to wait for the child’s search before conducting a body search, after a backpack search turned up nothing.

The expert said what would have been truly unreasonable was if she had treated every perceived threat as a true emergency.

“You get a boy-cried-wolf-type of situation,” said Klinger. “We can’t do a Defcon 5 at every single threat. That’s not safety; that’s constant panic. School would never continue.”

Zwerner’s attorneys flatly rejected this line of thinking. They questioned what kind of threat could be greater than a six-year-old bringing a gun to school, and what an “overreaction” would look like by administrators. 

They pointed to the Newport News School protocol at the time, which was for teachers to immediately inform administrators about any perceived threats. Zwerner’s attorneys argued Parker did not investigate the teacher’s concerns and never interacted with the student.

Closing arguments could be as soon as Wednesday. 

On Thursday, Abby Zwerner took the stand, recalling how she thought she was going to die after being shot by her 6-year-old student in 2023. 

Zwerner answered questions on the stand for more than an hour.

She described the lasting impact of the incident, from ongoing physical struggles like being unable to open bags or water bottles due to her hand injury, to the strain it’s placed on her relationships with family and friends.

“I thought I had died. I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven,” Zwerner testified. “But then it all got black. And so, I then thought I wasn’t going there. And then my next memory is I see two co-workers around me, and I process that I’m hurt and they’re putting pressure on where I’m hurt.”

Zwerner no longer works for the school division and has said she has no plans to teach again. It was revealed in court that she has become a licensed cosmetologist. Still, her injuries from the shooting and subsequent surgeries have delayed her from working full-time in the profession.

A physician testified Wednesday that Zwerner can’t make a tight fist with her left hand, which has less than half its normal grip strength.

Former assistant principal Ebony Parker is accused of failing to act after several people voiced concerns to her in the hours before the shooting that the student had a gun in his backpack.

Zwerner testified she first heard about the gun prior to class recess from a reading specialist, and at one point asked the teacher, who was tipped off by other students, to report the weapon to school leadership. The shooting happened a few hours later.

Administrators were unable to find the weapon, despite searching the child’s backpack. Despite her injuries, Zwerner was able to hustle her students out of the classroom. She said she eventually passed out in the school office.

“The moment went by very fast,” she said.

Zwerner acknowledged that she was not the person to notify school leadership of the presence of a weapon, as written in the school division’s safety and management plan. 

Another medical expert, who conducted a psychological evaluation of Zwerner after the shooting, testified that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from the shooting event.

Parker is the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal as defendants.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

On Wednesday, Zwerner’s attorneys released new body camera and surveillance video as first responders descended on Richneck Elementary School 

Deputies had their firearms drawn as they walked into Zwerner’s classroom. There, one witness said he found a teacher restraining a six-year-old boy and a gun on the ground.

“We were quite taken aback; we didn’t expect to see so young a suspect,” said Cpl. Thomas Blythe retired from the Newport News Sheriff’s Office. “When I found the weapon on the floor, I called out that there was a gun and stood by it.”

Medics went directly to Zwerner as she lay on the ground, putting pressure on her hand and chest. Doctors testified they have since performed multiple surgeries on Zwerner’s hand as the bullet traveled through her hand and lodged itself in her chest.

Doctors said the bullet is still in Zwerner, calling the surgery to remove it ‘too dangerous’ as it is inches from her heart. Another said Zwerner had to undergo a ‘bone graft,’ taken from her hip to make up for the bones lost in her hand. 

“A devastating injury is a devastating injury,” said Dr. Romney Anderson, with Riverside Health. “She’ll never have full range of motion in her hand, like she does on the other side of her body.”

Parker’s legal team remained mostly quiet throughout the day, except when Zwerner’s team introduced a school administration expert witness, Ann Shufflebarger.

Shufflebarger testified that Dr. Parker failed all four times to take reasonable action when another teacher notified her about the threat the six-year-old boy posed. Parker’s attorneys vigorously fought back against these claims, as they said she had a duty to oversee state testing that was happening at the same time.

Shufflebarger disagreed. She told jurors that Parker had a minimal role in overseeing testing, and whatever the role she had should have ended the second a threat became apparent.

“It’s almost like a triage situation, you have to determine what is more important, what is more urgent at this time – and a report of a firearm stops everything,” said Shufflebarger.

Witness testimony ended with Abby Zwerner’s twin sister, Hannah, taking the stand. Abby’s twin told jurors how much the shooting has impacted her sister on both a physical and emotional level. 

Hannah told the jury that Abby still refuses to talk about certain parts of that day.

“Her light has kind of dimmed,” said Hannah Zwerner. “She’s afraid to leave the house, someone has to go with her, and now there is this wall between her and the rest of the world.”

Attorneys said Abby Zwerner could take the stand as early as Thursday. 

On Tuesday, Jurors heard from Ann Shufflebarger, an educator and school administrator for more than 30 years. She testified that Parker failed to act four separate times, once for each teacher who came forward to warn her that a 6-year-old student may have a gun.

“So many actions needed to be taken that day,” Shufflebarger said. “Dr. Parker did none of them.”

Zwerner’s attorneys also showed surveillance and body camera footage capturing the chaos as first responders arrived at Richneck Elementary on Jan. 6, 2023, the day the 6-year-old student shot Zwerner in her classroom near the end of the school day. Jurors saw the moments when police found the teacher on the ground after being shot by her student.

During this testimony, Shufflebarger told jurors that Zwerner and other teachers followed proper protocol by reporting their concerns to an administrator. Parker, seated in the courtroom, shook her head vigorously as that statement was made.

Parker’s attorney pushed back, arguing that the teachers also had a role in preventing the shooting. When asked whether teachers were the “first line responders” to the child’s behavior, Shufflebarger said, “First line responders are to report it to administration.”

Later, doctors testified that the bullet that struck Abby Zwerner remains lodged in her chest, just inches from her heart. They said it’s too dangerous to remove, and she will have to live with it for the rest of her life.

Teachers’ testimony dominated Tuesday, the second day of the trial. They said multiple warnings were raised about the child’s behavior and the possibility that he had a weapon.

Attorneys argued that Zwerner, other teachers, and even students alerted school administrators — including Parker — that the child had brought a gun to school, but their concerns were ignored.

“I told him, ‘It’s OK, you can tell me, I’m a teacher,’” said Jennifer West, a first-grade teacher at Richneck. “He was visibly scared and said, ‘I can’t, J.T. said he would hurt me, blow us up.’”

“Two little girls came up to me and said JT has a gun,” said Amy Kovac, an educator of more than 30 years. “I told Dr. Parker, but she said, ‘He has little pockets.’”

Ultimately, these warnings went unheeded, as surveillance video showed first-graders fleeing from their classroom as teachers raced inside. There, Kovac said she held her arms around the boy as she placed a 911 call to Newport News Police.

“I felt like I had a bubble of God around me, and I walked straight to him,” said Kovac. “I didn’t say anything, I took his wrist, and his left arm, which I knew he used to shoot, and held him.”

Attorneys said Parker ignored up to six warnings about the boy. These teachers testified that Parker barely acknowledged them as she stayed in her office for the day. Kovac said she arranged her own search of the 6-year-old’s bag as he went out for recess but did not locate the firearm.

While Parker allowed the bookbag search, teachers said she would not allow others to search the child’s body.

“She said his mother will be coming to get him soon, so we can hold off and wait and maybe inform the mom when she comes to pick him up,” said Rolonzo Rawles, a guidance counselor at Richneck Elementary School.

But Parker’s attorneys said their client could not predict what would happen in that classroom. Defense attorneys said Parker had other duties that day, as it was the state’s makeup test day for several students.

Under state law, attorneys said Parker had to oversee the process and had no additional support. They said she had a legal duty to do this, above what is listed in the school division’s handbook.

Parker’s attorney also questioned teachers at multiple points about why they did not call the police themselves if the threat was so prominent.

“Was Dr. Parker indifferent? Did she fail to exercise some degree of care?” questioned her lawyer. “Did Abby Zwerner fail to take steps for her own safety?”

Zwerner’s attorneys adamantly rejected this, saying teachers followed the school division’s listed protocol, which is to inform a school administrator. They said it was Parker who failed when she did not contact the police, a school resource officer, or leave her office.

The second day concluded with testimony from Abby Zwerner’s mother. She told jurors she was sitting at her desk when Abby’s boss called and informed her Abby was shot. Zwerner’s mother said she raced to the hospital to be by her daughter’s side.

“She saw me come through the room and just said ‘Mommy,’” said Julie Zwerner. “I haven’t been Mommy in years, and she just laying there with all these machines around her.”

It’s unclear at this point whether Abby Zwerner or Ebony Parker will take the stand.

The case is expected to last up to two weeks. If the school division is found liable, it would mark the first time in U.S. history that a school district is held partially responsible for a school shooting.